More about RSS

In a world where all of us suffer from information overload to some extent, the ability to pick and choose the articles that we find interesting and have them delivered directly to us surely has to be a useful service. That’s what RSS does. RSS is a wonderful thing, but I know many people who still don’t use it.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a means of subscribing to a webpage, or a blog, or blog comments, or a podcast, or a series of news articles – pretty much anything really – and then every time something on that site changes, a piece of software called a feedreader collects and collates all those changes into one place. You subscribe to whatever you like. It’s a little like designing your very own personal newspaper that contains only the articles that interest you.

RSS allows you to gather information from virtually any source, and the software that delivers it is not your email, but a “feedreader” or “aggregator”. (Some newer email and browser applications now have the feedreader function built right in so you can track everything from one convenient place. It makes a lot of sense.)

RSS is the technology which let’s you track your favourite blogs and it’s also what enables iTunes to keep track of your subscribed podcasts. RSS allows you to subscribe to journals and magazines, newspapers, and all sorts of online resources. RSS is definitely cool!

As Chris highlights,

When I did a classroom blogging project last year I used RSS to create a feed for every student in my class. Each time one of them posted anything, I would know instantly. I think it used to surprise them just how quickly I would know whenever any of them would post something to their blog. Quite literally, they would write something and normally within a minute or so I would say, “hey, nice post!” I’m sure it made them feel more accountable. They knew I read everything they wrote. Everything. Without RSS there is no way I could have stayed on top of it like that.

Read Really Useful Syndication to ‘get the full picture’.

The world at your fingertips

As part of Quentin de Souza’s presentation for the K12 Online Conference in 2006 he put together a 50-page document for us all. It is a combination of the 50+ RSS Ideas for Educators document and the Teaching Hacks wiki. It is geared towards an introduction to RSS, but carries on  into topics such as tagging, social bookmarking, wikis and more.

Get your own copy of Quentin’s Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators: A Guide to RSS and More.

If you feel like being adventurous, you might like to explore the world of options from The Ultimate RSS Toolbox – 120+ RSS Resources!

How can I use RSS?

• Create resources and research to share
• Collate student writing from many blogs (a year 6 example)
• Track student writing development in blogs
• Share quality RSS feeds with staff, from your faculty or library
• Create virtual reference services
• Grab content specific resources and deliver them to students (a news example using DarFur)
• Use peer networks to develop knowledge
• Tracking the authors, journalists and news that are important to you
• Audio Professional Learning on demand – Podcasts, Talkr, audio books. Try The Education Podcast Network, iTunes, or some of these Great Podcasts for Professional Learning
• Video Professional development on demand – conference presentations, Vodcasts. Collaborate with other educators
• Track student collaboration on Wikis and Blogs
• Tracking people, places, things
• Conduct searches 24/7 pages, movies, images

RSS Smarts

RSS Ideas in Education provides detailed information about a range of RSS options and strategies to support collaboration, sharing and information gathering.
RSS Workshop Notes for Netvibes – includes instructions for setting up Journal Alerts through EBSCO HOST.
Using Pageflakes as a student portal
RSS. A Quickstart Guide for Educators.
Tracking the web with Single Page Aggregators. Great long article highlighting various aggregators – beyond basic RSS. Worth a read, and check out the comments too. From SolutionWatch – a great source of information.
RSS is changing the Web: How will it change our classrooms
RSS Using Bloglines – Instructions
5 News Aggregation Methods Compared
Heyjude’s RSS tag at Del.ici.ous
HeyJude: Bloglines RSS collection

And for the very adventurous here is the RSS and Javascript Cookbook!